-Breathy voice, also called murmured voice, soughing, or susurrationOK, so, I'm trying to learn how to properly pronounce the breathy voiced consonants found in many Indo-Aryan languages such as Hindustani, Bengali & Marathi. The problem is, I can't hear the difference between the breathy voiced & regular voiced consonants. Wikipedia instructs me "to constrict the glottis, but separate the arytenoid cartilages that control one end. This results in the vocal cords being drawn together for voicing in the back, but separated to allow the passage of large volumes of air in the front." I don't know what the hell any of that means! Does anyone here have any tips for distinguishing between breathy voice & regular voice? Particularly in the context of Indo-Aryan languages.

Thanks for the tips!I can't really hear a difference between the breathy voiced & regular voiced consonants in natural speech but I can totally hear the difference on that site.Anyways, I think I've learned how to pronounce them now.I think /pʰ/ is often realized as [f] (or perhaps [ɸ]) in Hindustani, right? I think this is also the case for Bengali & Marathi.

Are you sure about that? According to what I read, /x/ entered Assamese as a result of lenition of the 3 Sanskrit sibilants. Furthermore, Assamese retains /kʰ/, represented by <খ>; /x/ is represented by <শ>, <ষ> or <স>.

Well, I think I might learn Sinhala, which, ironically, doesn't have breathy-voice or aspiration. I really like the sound of the language, more than either Hindustani or Nepali, both of which I was also considering. I also love the unique orthography, more than Devanagari.